The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion and American Legal History

Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman

Abstract

This book offers a constitutional and historical survey of American territorial expansion from the founding era to the present day. The authors describe the Constitution's design for territorial acquisition and governance, and examine the ways in which practice over the past two hundred years has diverged from that original vision. Noting that most of America's territorial acquisitions—including the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase, and the territory acquired after the Mexican–American and Spanish–American wars—resulted from treaties, they elaborate a Jeffersonian-based theory of the fe ... More

This book offers a constitutional and historical survey of American territorial expansion from the founding era to the present day. The authors describe the Constitution's design for territorial acquisition and governance, and examine the ways in which practice over the past two hundred years has diverged from that original vision. Noting that most of America's territorial acquisitions—including the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase, and the territory acquired after the Mexican–American and Spanish–American wars—resulted from treaties, they elaborate a Jeffersonian-based theory of the federal treaty power and assess American territorial acquisitions from this perspective. The authors find that at least one American acquisition of territory and many of the basic institutions of territorial governance have no constitutional foundation, and explore the often strange paths which constitutional law has traveled to permit such deviations from the Constitution's original meaning.

End Matter

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